Partial Address Translation Please

[dai3yuen]

Hi there.

I need to send a letter but I need the street name portion of the address translated:

宝元薪愿二区B栋505

If anyone could help me with this, it would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers!

[taylor04]

You need to SEND the letter? Just print the address off, tape it onto the letter and put China at the bottom if you live outside of China. Other than that, it doesn't look like it has a street name but rather the name of a living compound. Maybe I'm misunderstanding your reason for wanting to translate the address...

[jbradfor]

It won't help the OP, but I'm curious. What does 栋 mean here? The translation I have is "ridge-beam of a roof". Is it used as a synecdoche to mean a house in general, i.e. a street address?

Edited December 14, 2009 at 01:45 PM by jbradfor

[chrix]

it's a measure word for buildings, so in a group of buildings you can differentiate them like that: Building A, B, C etc.

[taylor04]

yep, 幢 is also another mw for buildings, I don't think there is any problem interchanging them but not sure

[chrix]

I'm only familiar with 棟 used for naming/enumerating buldings, but the Google seems to suggest that 幢 works as well... There might be others.. I thought 廈 too, but this is more like suffixoid (e.g. in the form of XX大廈) rather than like A棟/B幢

[taylor04]

My old complex used 幢 for the building. Although I really don't know the differences in between these, ie 幢 for a certain type of building and 棟 for a different type. Hopefully a native speaker can chime in and say if there is any difference or if they are interchangeable

[HashiriKata]

I'm not a native speaker but I know that both 幢 and 栋 are measure-words and can be used interchangeably. 大廈 on the other hand is a noun, so you can say 那幢大廈, 那栋大廈, just as you can say 那幢房子, 那栋房子, etc.

[dai3yuen]

I need to 'courier' the letter over there, not just pop it in the mail. Sorry, I should have been a bit more specific.

Anyways, the courier company needs an English translation of the address....and the recipient does not speak English...I phoned the courier company today (Purolator) and they state that they use 'english speaking couriers' so they must have an english translation of the address...i dunno, but this is kind of screwed up...as that doesn't make much sense to me...I guess I could just put a google translation of the address in English and hope that the courier either phones the recipient or uses the chinese address (which I would be puting on the envelope!)

Anyways, any help that you guys can give me is appreciated.

Thanks

[jbradfor]

My attempt

宝元薪愿 Baoyuan Xinyuan [a pinyin transliteration, rather than a translation]

二区 District 2

B栋 Building B

505 [assume the house number? I would think usually there would be a 号 or something]

[taylor04]

Looks good, and yea the standard is the house number are put on the end. While you can put the Chinese pinyin on it, slap the Chinese characters on it as well. I've never heard of a courier company using only foreigners to deliver packages. Even if this is the case, if they can't find it, they have the Chinese address to get directions

[chrix]

I seem to remember that for mainland addresses you should put everything in pinyin rather than translating it into characters (in Taiwan you would translated things, and flip the order around).

So in that case it would be

宝元薪愿 Baoyuan Xinyuan

二区 Er qu

B栋 B dong

505 (hao?)